Joyce Chenhttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com
trying again, getting it rightMon, 19 Mar 2018 14:15:04 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngJoyce Chenhttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com
Secretshttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/secrets/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/secrets/#commentsSat, 30 Sep 2017 15:38:24 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/?p=109I was recently told that some acquaintances refrained from getting to know me better because they found me intimidating and scary – they never knew what I was thinking.

Admittedly, I agree that it can be hard to tell what I’m thinking about at any given point in time since thoughts are constantly churning in my head. So it’s not a wrong observation to make of me.

I think what was not verbalised, was perhaps that there’s an edge to me that people find difficult to penetrate or understand. And I suspect that edge comes from the secrets I keep. Things about myself that I keep guarded because that’s what goddamn secrets are. It’s not that I enjoy secrets. But I sometimes enjoy doing things that are hard to share with others or talk about without being judged. It’s a bit of pervasion in my personality, a dark part of me that is unfortunately still me.

This is not to say others don’t keep deep, dark secrets. But maybe they aren’t as preoccupied about them as I am? I don’t know.

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]]>https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/secrets/feed/1edahs10Erasing Historyhttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/erasing-history/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/erasing-history/#respondThu, 31 Aug 2017 03:16:35 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/?p=78This morning, my heart fell when an old photo of my ex and I turned up on a suggested Facebook memory.

It’s not that there are any feelings anymore for the person; just the residual pain of a lost love and the sting of a reminder that this is one person who chose to walk away from you rather than to walk with you.

I know the simpler way is to just decide, pictures of my life from 7 years ago should be deleted so they never turn up again. Deleting pictures from 7 years ago would stop people from curiously seeking out how different my life was back then, when I had shared that life with someone different. Ignorance is bliss when you don’t have reminders of something you’d already lost.

But the higher order argument for me has always been that I’m against erasing, whitewashing, rewriting history. Or pretending a history didn’t exist because I had erased all evidence of it. To me, it is an inauthentic way to live.

It’s a damn pain in the ass, and it’s a small battle only within myself to stubbornly stick to doing this. But it’s an important battle. It’s a small step towards accepting my life and its journey. It’s a small step towards accepting that even uncomfortable truths are truths.

I also get the unfortunate opportunity of reflecting on how I feel about the memory. Have I progressed? Do I feel less now with more time in between? Do I still smile as genuinely as I did back then? Did I learn from my mistakes to do my best to avoid the same pitfalls?

Rejecting history is the smallest, most convenient lie you can tell yourself: “If you pretend for long enough that something never happened, then maybe it really didn’t.”

It’s painful but it makes more sense to process this slowly and let nature take its course. Time does dull things and while it’s impossible to forget completely, time will take the edge off and leave you with something that is manageable.

I’ll end by saying, I would like to forget but I will not. I cannot make things unhappen. There is only pain and acceptance. And by accepting I can slowly let go.

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]]>https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/erasing-history/feed/0edahs10Hello againhttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/hello-again/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/hello-again/#respondMon, 29 May 2017 05:55:37 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/?p=30Since the time I last updated, I’ve moved offices, gotten married, travelled, done some cool stuff. There still isn’t any one particular thing I want to talk about.

What is content?

Is there anything original that I wish to create? Frankly, it’s been a while since I created anything. Consumed, yes. Created, no.

Were humans not made to consume in part, and create in part? Yet, many of us will live without truly creating anything. Does that mean we’re incomplete?

The impulse to create is a living one. Which means it’s possible for the impulse to die. When that impulse dies, what else dies?

Perhaps my understanding of creation is too narrow. I’m only thinking of creation in the form of:

another life – babies

art – drawn, written, sculpted, performed, etc.

things – inventions, innovations, etc.

ideas – new businesses, dialogue, etc.

If I have not done any of the above, does it mean I’ve not been creating? I’m not sure that there are other forms of creation. If so, then I am merely consuming and recycling. There is nothing noteworthy that someone elsewhere hasn’t already done.

So if I’ve lived, but not created, can I still say I’ve truly lived?

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]]>https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/hello-again/feed/0edahs10Unsolicited Advice and Being a Friendhttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/unsolicited-advice-and-being-a-friend/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/unsolicited-advice-and-being-a-friend/#respondTue, 23 Sep 2014 14:37:28 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/?p=25For someone in the Comms line, I seem to be very bad at communicating with people. Social awkwardness aside, I can’t stop miscommunication in my life. Especially in instances where I seem to keep giving unsolicited advice to others.

I forget that sometimes, people are only asking for an opinion. But this doesn’t mean they’re asking for advice. And I get carried away with the latter.

It’s important for me to understand things as completely as possible, or at the very least, in context, so that I don’t say the wrong thing. It’s hard for me to give an opinion if I don’t possess the minimum amount of facts or details. Because otherwise how can I truly commit to an opinion? A part of me understands that this is because what you say does have impact on others – if not why would they ask you? On the other hand, a part of me is flattered and I get carried away that my opinion is being sought, and, being presumptuous that the asker may not know better, start to give unsolicited advice about what I think is the crux of the issue.

Something similar has happened twice in succession yesterday and today to two different people I’ve interacted with. In both instances, I managed to upset the asker albeit in different ways. And I’m upset too, because my ego is hurt and I feel insecure that really, nobody cares enough to ask my advice on anything. Perhaps they’re just asking for an opinion on something specific, but I ventured beyond the boundaries of the conversation. Or perhaps all they really wanted was someone to listen to them. Regardless, in both instances I failed them. I yappered on, so in love with my internal voice and my supreme logic.

It feels bad, and it also feels lonely that at the end of the day nobody will give me the time of day to speak about anything in depth. And it made me realize, to be whole I need to be my own best friend. I can’t rely on someone apart from myself to be my one best friend, because when would be the next time you misunderstand each other? When would be the next time you unintentionally hurt each other? My insecurities stem from my not being my own friend. From not seeing my own worth. And so I project these insecurities about needing to be useful to someone. If I were my own friend, I would not need to… Impress my worthiness to someone else.

At least now I know.

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]]>https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/unsolicited-advice-and-being-a-friend/feed/0edahs10Names and Faceshttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/names-and-faces/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/names-and-faces/#respondMon, 08 Sep 2014 09:43:22 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/?p=23I’m bad with names, sometimes with faces. There are ex-boyfriends whom I’ve met in passing and I can’t quite remember if I know or dated them. I am sure to a certain degree I dated them, and yet cannot be 100% sure. There are people who I knew for a good 2 years and whom I studied with quite closely whose names I have simply not bothered remembering.

It’s not that I am callous, or that I’m snobbish. But there is just some information I cannot, or choose not to, retain. The SO calls this my “academic thing” where I only retain important theories and info, much like some academics with selective memory.

At times it feels like my brain is just slipping from lack of use. Nothing much to exercise it with. And it sometimes worries me that my lack of memory is the early sign of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

I do comfort myself with self-assurance, such as thinking that I choose not to remember info that just won’t be of any real value. Again, it sounds rather callous, but it’s actually more like a coping mechanism. And honestly unhelpful when you need to remember some things.

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]]>https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/names-and-faces/feed/0edahs10Nobody and Somebodyhttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/nobody-and-somebody/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/nobody-and-somebody/#respondMon, 25 Aug 2014 06:00:22 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/nobody-and-somebody/At a theatre/dance show recently, I was seated 3 rows down from Ivan Heng, and Ong Keng Sen sat almost directly in front of me. It felt like I was in a privileged circle of trust, but of course, only in my imagination.

In the darkened theatre, as we sat waiting for the show to begin, Ong Keng Sen audibly whispered to his companion, “who’s that?” with his head turned slightly to the left and towards the back. People were still streaming in to their seats. He whispered again, “who’s that?”

Knowing full well he wasn’t referring to me, I thought to myself, “I’m a nobody.” I’m a nobody in the sense that I’m not somebody that would prompt Ong Keng Sen to whisper and ask, “who’s that?”

Walking out of the theatre, having witnessed from the corner of my eye how Ivan Heng had thoroughly enjoyed the show as he sat on the edge of his seat, I thought again to myself with a mixture of solitude and wistfulness, “I’m a nobody.” I am everybody, melting into the crowd, and nobody, an indiscernible face. I’m not somebody who would make a stranger sit on the edge of his seat, relishing my work.

But I’m also not Ivan Heng nor Ong Keng Sen, and in a way that is a blessing because I know people are not watching me like I was watching them, from the corner of my eye. And with that anonymity there is some semblance of privacy.

Still, my vanity makes me yearn to be somebody, not just a nobody.

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]]>https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/nobody-and-somebody/feed/0edahs10Conscious Revisitinghttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/conscious-revisiting/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/conscious-revisiting/#respondThu, 07 Aug 2014 10:53:27 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/?p=19Part of life seems to be about retracing the steps you have taken. Having finished Interview with the Vampire, I carried on to The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. I have read neither book previously, but I did read Servant of the Bones when I was 13 or 14.

So to me, this is a form of revisiting.

For the time devoted to these books, I do sometimes feel like perhaps I should read something a little more contemporary?

And yet, it feels nice to put your time into something that, while older, is classic. It’s a conscious choice. A bit like conscious uncoupling. Where you embark on something that makes you yearn for something better, but that guilty pleasure remains. Because, you know, this is what you decided.

And so I trudge through her book, getting slightly annoyed by her whiny characters who are just so narcissistic and self-absorbed. They are actually just romance novels with boy love.

Be thankful you no longer live in a society that, [upon knowing who you are], bashes your face in.

It’s largely true. I live in a place where people tend toward civility. Or as the speaker quipped, “a society that tends to avoid conflict”. Which are two different interpretations of roughly the same thing.

But that quote was a jarring reminder that not so long ago, and not so far away, there are indeed people who get their faces bashed in for nothing more than how they look, how they sound, how they think, or who they choose to identify with.

How would someone feel so offended by something, that s/he’d want to punch that person? Over the weekend there was very insightful commentary on how conservatives function through a paradigm of fear.

History has plenty of evidence that fear causes people to turn against one another. Fear of the unknown, fear of the new, fear of the Other. Certainly, history has also shown many examples of people who have reacted to the Other with not fear, but acceptance and open minds.

In a human’s life trajectory, is it that we grow fearlessly, but with age, we start becoming conservative because we start counting down the days to death? And as life becomes increasingly finite, we cling to the things we know as if they may offer some salve to that void we approach?

With monotheistic religions such as Christianity, ‘faith’ is becoming a cheap word.

faith (n.)mid-13c., “duty of fulfilling one’s trust,” from Old French feid, foi “faith, belief, trust, confidence, pledge,” from Latin fides “trust, faith, confidence, reliance, credence, belief,” from root of fidere “to trust,” from PIE root *bheidh- (source also of Greek pistis; see bid). For sense evolution, see belief. Theological sense is from late 14c.; religions called faiths since c.1300. Source

Belief used to mean “trust in God,” while faith meant “loyalty to a person based on promise or duty” (a sense preserved in keep one’s faith, in good (or bad) faith and in common usage of faithful, faithless, which contain no notion of divinity). But faith, as cognate of Latin fides, took on the religious sense beginning in 14c. translations, and belief had by 16c. become limited to “mental acceptance of something as true,” from the religious use in the sense of “things held to be true as a matter of religious doctrine” (a sense attested from early 13c.). Source

Loyalty to a person based on promise or duty. I can see how ‘faith’ came to be appropriated by religious language as here it becomes loyalty to a deity, rather than to a person. Without going into discussion on how religious movements themselves evolved from personal to external, religion was always about a higher loyalty, and in fact, reaching for the absolute highest loyalty. But the original meaning of faith captures that relationship between people very well; that we are bound by promise or duty to be faithful to one another.

Could it be that because we shifted the focus of faith to something abstract beyond ourselves that we have broken down that fundamental relationship between people? That the highest good now is no more behaving in good faith towards another, but to have faith in something beyond ourselves. And to have faith becomes, you guessed it, deeply personal and deeply subjective (read, deeply open to interpretation). Instead of faith being the seal of a contract with someone else, faith becomes an object you acquire and hold on to; from an action to a possession.

and like my many suspicions about the subject, faith becomes something you have to defend, because logically you must hold on to it, cherish it, preserve it.

Maybe this is why people become more conservative. Maybe.

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]]>https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/conservatism-and-holding-faith/feed/0edahs10Look up faith at Dictionary.comLook up belief at Dictionary.comFear, Life and Deathhttps://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/fear-life-and-death/
https://jcedahs.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/fear-life-and-death/#respondThu, 24 Jul 2014 01:23:19 +0000http://jcedahs.wordpress.com/?p=15I fear the unfulfilled life. I imagine a car tyre blow while I walk by, killing me instantly. And it makes me wonder, do I fear death, or do I fear a pointless death of a pointless life?

There’s a lot, a lot of drivel guised as life advice about living meaningfully, taking it a day at a time, going after your passions, etcetcetc. ad infinitum.

How do you live a life of any kind of significance, and significance to whom? Is it enough to do something and do it well? Or enough that you do good?

It seems most people just do what they end up doing from a stream of conscious and unconscious choices. A lot of the self-help type advice don’t actually tell you what a meaningful life is. It is meant to help you make decisions.

But reality is that many people do not have a choice nor an opportunity to make decisions for themselves. Or they make false choices. So a lot of this self-help advice either do not apply to a great number of people or are used to justify choices.

Why do people care so much whether they’ve made the right choices?

It goes back full circle to that insecurity, that fear that you may not have lived a life of significance to anyone, even to yourself.

I did not write this to provide answers or life pro-tips. I can only say that when you take a good hard look at that fear, you may or may not find a breakthrough.

1. My father grabbing my hand and crossing a busy road near Serangoon Central. I was perhaps 13 or 14? The age is inconsequential but what matters was that I was old enough to find it odd after so many years of not having my hand held, yet young enough that it was not a strange sight.

My mother from a young age had repeatedly warned me never to let any man, or male, even my father, touch me in any way. And so, I am bereft of any memories of physical contact with my father or brother. This was couched as for my own protection at the time, and I see the wisdom in that, and yet to have grown up this way I have severely lacked experiences of hugging or physical affection from my family.

This is why this instance stuck out for me. Because for whatever reason, my father had done something utterly out of the norm.

2. A church friend, after we had gone through a session on the 5 languages of love that was so in vogue at the time, told me that I had to work on that aspect of love dealing with physical contact. She had observed that I would cringe slightly when she hugged me. You know that slight cringe where you put minute distance between yourself and the hugger? I was doing it subconsciously because, as explained in point 1, it was an unusual experience.

This revelation appalled me. I’d like to think of myself as an affectionate person, not extremely so, but affectionate enough. And it made me cringe inwardly all the times she must have felt I was pulling away from her unknowingly.

And after that gentle admonition, I always tried my best to give full, proper hugs. Not that awkward sideway, one-armed hug. Proper hugs. And to give more hugs. Because people more often than not, need more hugs.

A colleague expressed his discomfort for people of the same gender holding hands openly. Obviously I disagreed, because, why shouldn’t people hold the hand of whomever they wished to? I had held the hands of girls for many reasons, love and friendship. So I would be the last person to agree with such homophobia, or lack of cultural nuance.

But back to my point. Human affection. Human affection is simple to give, but so, so hard to actually give it. And sometimes, from personal experience, so hard to receive it too. If humans were more affectionate, would the world be happier? Would relationships be better? Would we achieve something beyond ourselves because we share a moment? If people had more shared moments, wouldn’t we then strive for something beyond our selves?

I have since resolved that should I ever have children, I would break away from the pattern of non-affection. I would cuddle them, hug them, kiss them, show them that love should be expressed freely, and that love should also be given freely. A world bereft of affection is a world withered from love. And that is a sad thing. What do you do when someone is sad? You hug them. Hold their hand. Ruffle their hair. Touch their skin, and share your common humanity.